If you become interested in using plants as medicine, this book is the perfect place to begin.

Lambsquarters

3. Find your mentor

Connect with an advanced wild food enthusiast. Find a foraging mentor through your homeschooling community, university extension office, or local nature center.

Have your mentor show you and your children the basics.

4. A place to harvest

Over the past few years we’ve discovered a few favorite foraging sites near our home.

We know where to go if we want watercress, nettles, elderberries, ramps, or blackberries – all within minutes of our home.

Check with your local park office to determine if you can forage on their property.

Or ask landowners for permission to forage. Many are happy to see a few “weeds” leaving their property!Jewelweed

Resources

I write about wild foods from time to time–some posts that might interest you include recipes for ramps, dandelions, and nettles. I’ve also posted about family foraging here and here if you’re looking for more inspiration!

What about you? What is your favorite wild food? Or if you haven’t foraged before, what hurdles stand in your way?

Rachel Wolf woke up recently and realized that she's living the life she has always wanted. Her days are spent with and two spunky unschoolers, running LuSa Organics (her small business), and hanging the laundry out on the line. Rachel writes about her homeschooling, homemaking, and non-violent parenting path on her blog Clean.

This is something I’ve been wanting to get into for quite some time. Thank you for laying out the basics! How do you prepare the lambsquarters? We’ve got quite a bit of that around here.Liz @ The HomeStyle’s latest post: {New Moms} My birth stories (part 2)

We had them for dinner just last night, Liz! We prepare them like chard or spinach. Pluck leaves from the stem, cut into smaller pieces and saute in butter or olive oil. You can cook the leaves whole but my kids prefer them chopped a bit.

John, My career before motherhood was as a naturalist. My work now is creating herbal body care products. Those factors plus my love of cooking and homeschooling means I’ve grown to understand and appreciate wild foods. My parents and sister also forage (and they are better mushroom hunters than I am by leagues!).Rachel Wolf’s latest post: Foraging with Kids

Great post. We love to forage for our meals but I do remember the nervousness in the beginning. Now, like you, we are adding new things to try with each passing season. Such a wonderful way to eat and connect with nature. Thanks for spreading the word!Dawn Suzette’s latest post: A Taste of Prince Edward Island :: Part 2

I’d love to try more wild edibles but honestly every book (we own a couple) or resources suggests “saute in butter or oil” – we don’t eat much of either and I think a lot of the great flavor comes from the fat. But I suppose I could substitute the fats I do use – nuts, seeds etc… I’m totally up for it just thinking it might lack the flavor… We do love munching on fresh tasty green weeds.

A great reminder about “eating out”. This year we foraged wild asparagus (delicious) and spring dandelion (bitter). Our family also forages for non-vegetarian morsels too (critters). When asked what bunny tastes like, my 4-year-old daughter replied matter of factly, “just like turtle.” I’m just proud my kids are learning that culinary adventure is not limited to the Happy Meal menu at McDonald’s!Well Armed Housewife’s latest post: Many facets of being a Well-Armed Housewife

I would love to get a book on wild edibles. I think that our entire yard is full of weeds we could eat (not to mention my garden). It is something that I think is important to learn, thank you for the resources you provided!Heather’s latest post: Home Binders – Part Four

I love your courage and sense of adventure. And this post is so unbelievably thorough. I pointed my readers in your direction when my 8-year-old daughter wrote on my blog about how we are eating flowers — both cultivated and wild — because we are newbies to foraging.

The only thing I’ve ever forged for was elderberries. When I was a kid my dad was a rural mailman and during the summer I would ride with him and pick elderberries my mom turned in to the best jam ever!

We’re not doing much foraging for food but are becoming much more aware of our local environment and becoming better at plant identification at this point (my 8 year old is VERY good at this!). She is loving the Herb Fairies curriculum (Thanks to Renee @ FIMBY for telling us about this program) she began this fall which is helping her/us learn more about edible ‘weeds’ and those we can use for medicinal purposes.

Rachel~what do you do with the jewelweed? I transplanted a couple of plants from our woods to up near our house a couple of years ago and it has taken over! It was lovely and delicate and I thought it would be grand around the house. It has taken that to heart and now it is everywhere!

Hi Amy. I replied to you but it didn’t pop up in the right place. To repeat: It’s the perfect itch remedy! Poison ivy, bug bites, chicken pox. Just infuse it in oil and make into a balm with beeswax. I’ll be sharing a recipe on my blog Clean next week, in fact!Rachel Wolf’s latest post: {This moment}

It’s the perfect itch remedy! Poison ivy, bug bites, chicken pox. Just infuse it in oil and make into a balm with beeswax. I’ll be sharing a recipe on my blog Clean next week, in fact!Rachel Wolf’s latest post: {This moment}

I always taught my children and now my grandchildren how to forage. My father taught me some as a child and I was always looking for wild foods. I was a Girl Scout leader years ago and once we got back late from a campout because I spied ripe blackberries in a field. One of the girls told her parents we were late because I stopped to let them graze. The parents thought that was insulting, but I liked it! After having some of the girls as 1st graders, I happened to be on a trip with them when they were starting high school. As they were hiking, some of them pointed out to girls I had never had many wild edibles…and this is greenbrier, you can cook it like asparagus or chew on it raw, this is….When asked they said, oh, Ms Debbie taught us that in Brownies. They remembered. My sons at 3 & 4 would hang out in the woods for hours and not come home for lunch. I went with them once and they said: This is our blackberry patch, they’re gone now, this is our blueberry patch, these are our grape vines, not ripe yet…they were definitely filling their tummy with healthy stuff! My 4 & 11 yo granddaughters teach their friends. This is what we do.

Rachel, thanks so much for this post! I am definitely going to look for the books you mentioned. My oldest son, 14, really LOVES the idea of being able to live off the land so I sent this post to him I shared with my blog readers and with my homeschool groups as well

Great thanks for share this information! i can’t wait to try this.
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We love foraging with our kids! Last year I made up a list of 100 things I wanted to learn with the kids over the summer (they helped and it included everything from worms to the Civil War to the distributive property) and foraging was one of the ones I added. I told my husband and he really helped me run with it. We tried so many things — cattails (buttered shoots and the super nutritious golden flour in pancakes), mulberries, raspberries, walnuts, milkweed pods (when they’re tiny they’re like mozzarella poppers when you saute them!) and so much more. He ended up learning so much and getting so good at it that he now has a foraging column, and we have a freezer full of acorn flour, wild raspberries and other goodies.

I made up a list of 10 homesteading skills that every child should learn and foraging for wild edibles is one of them (http://www.examiner.com/list/10-homesteading-skills-every-child-should-learn). Not only are wild foods so healthy but they’re also free and with a family of our size, that’s a good thing! LOL I am so glad that we all learned about foraging together, and I can’t wait for the new season to start.